[Imagine this posted on March 14, 2022. I’m so sorry everything is continuing to come so, so very out of order. I’m doing the best I can!]
This is posting while we’re in Barbados. And I thought I might as well do a little post about Wheel since we’re taking the trip and everything! (So this is a time to think about it.)
I talked a lot at the time about how much I had wanted the money for plastic surgery to put my body back together after years of weight fluctuations. Well, first off, my weight ended up (for a number of reasons) fluctuating during this pandemic as well.
Maybe, as much I believe I can be someone who’s fit and thin and maintains it, maybe I’m someone who’ll be struggling her whole life. Who knows. (Maybe had I gotten plastic surgery, my pandemic would’ve been different and things would be different. I dunno.)
But anyway, I talked about how I was sure that if I’d won a lot of money, I was going to use it for plastic surgery. And here are the two good things that came out of not winning the money.
- Since we went into a pandemic, I ended up having the opportunity to go back to school. And since my parents wanted to pay for it the first time, they went ahead and helped tremendously with me going back to finish. And they made it super clear that had I had a LOT more Wheel money, and not wanted to spend it on school? They would’ve respected that, but they wouldn’t have helped with school at all, in that case.
So, had I won more (including the bonus round), I would’ve absolutely used it for plastic surgery. My parents would not have paid for school. I wouldn’t have had enough for school and plastic surgery. So, I wouldn’t have gone to school. And now, not only am I done with my Bachelor’s. I rolled right into grad school!
I don’t know if my education will ever mean anything. But now I’ll have a Master’s degree, when I wouldn’t have otherwise. And hopefully that will do something for me, at some point!
- I started teaching private lessons, and I really liked it!
I felt bad that I had ‘lost’ so much money. (I mean, it’s hard to lose when it wasn’t yours to begin with.) But I wanted to figure out some way to ‘get it back’. So, I started looking at every little way I could to earn extra money.
Now, I haven’t made anywhere near the $37,000 (bonus round money) from teaching. But! I’ve met some really cool students, and figured out new ways to share my love of music and dance!
It’s really been a good addition to my life, and I highly doubt I would’ve done it otherwise.
So, in the end, everything always works out. You can almost always find silver lining to things. And these were my silver linings about not winning more money on Wheel!